Just how are you judged at work?

Most workplace policies and compensation systems are designed to reward observable behavior.

Most workplace policies, performance measures, and compensation systems are designed to reward observable behavior.

The question is: what actions at work are really being judged?

Traditional work environments tend to focus on the following behaviors and attributes, which heavily influence perceptions of employees’ job performance and engagement:

• Time at work — How long employees stay at work reflects a commitment to the job in the traditional work setting. Some employees even brag about how many hours they work in the week, equating their long hours to exemplary job performance and commitment to the company.

A long time ago, working the “60-hour work week” was considered a badge of honor and often led to career advancement. Unfortunately, this behavior also often led to worker burnout and declining job performance over time.

• Punctuality — Showing up to work every day on or before scheduled work start times is considered a basic and essential expectation of every employee. Weather conditions, sick children, snow days for schoolage kids, and the host of other issues that arise in the morning are never considered valid excuses for employees being even a few minutes late for work. Talk about pressure and stress! And this is before the day even starts!

“Yes man” — This is the term sometimes used for employees who always agree with the boss and never challenge the status quo. The key to success is to play the corporate game, do as told and play politics.

Amazingly, it works for many people who receive promotions and pay adjustments, not based on ability or job performance, but their ability to play politics better than other employees.

• Company comes first — It is understood that to be successful, employees need to place the company over anything, including family.

This mentality is to equate company loyalty with an unquestioned devotion to work over anything else. Work never suffers under this arrangement, just families.

Though there are still organizations in corporate America that promote and support these behaviors, attributes, and expectations, more companies have realized that these archaic perspectives simply do not work for today’s top performing employees.

They also realize that these ridiculous notions rarely, if ever, positively impact organizational success.

I believe that there is only one way to judge employee performance, and that is results. It’s observable, objective, measurable, and simple. This approach works well with top performing employees.

Average or poor performing employees do not fare well in this type of work environment. They would rather be judged on behaviors that have nothing to do with actual job performance.

And to have results, you need your top people engaged with their work. And, for your best people to be engaged, they need an environment where they can be free to perform their jobs at the highest level. It is an environment that is free of suffocating workplace practices, programs, expectations, and protocols.

If you hire top performers,

I believe that there is only one way to judge employee performance, and that is results. It’s observable, objective, measurable, and simple. This approach works well with top performing employees.

take the handcuffs off, and let them do their jobs. So consider the following: • Focus on quality of time at work and not just time spent at work

• Ask your top performers what, if any, obstacles they have at work that prohibit them from performing to their potential

• Treat people with respect and trust. Allow them to manage their schedules

• Let your employees know that recognition and rewards are provided to those employees who are above average performers

• Share with your employees the importance of knowing, believing, and loving their job. Remind them that what they do at work, when no one is watching, is the real test of their engagement with their job and the company

• Focus on creating and maintaining a great workplace for top performers.

How employees are judged, reviewed, and rewarded in today’s workplace needs to be vastly different than yesteryear. It is a new day, and some organizations need to wake up that the old ways are truly that — outdated, irrelevant, and rejected by top performers.

Unfortunately, while traditional managers focus all their attention on the old ways of judging employees’ performance, they miss seeing their top performers walk out the door for other opportunities.

Pat Perry